The present invention relates to a production management support apparatus and the like for estimating a work status when a prescribed worker performs prescribed work.
The manufacturing industry previously having been centered on “low-mix, high-volume production” is required to shift to “high-mix, low-volume production” in order to address the diversification of consumer needs. Features of high-mix, low-volume production are that the number of product types is extremely large and that new products (some products are similar in many aspects to existing products rather than being completely new) are made available in quick succession, making it difficult to formulate a production plan. One reason for the difficulty of formulating a production plan is that it is difficult to estimate a standard work time. Generally, for each work (process), a standard work time is generally determined based on an actual measurement of work time using a stopwatch or the like or on a calculation and an estimation by statistical analysis from past work history. However, in the case of worker-centered work, since a standard work time varies in accordance with differences in skill levels or the like among workers, the standard work time must be estimated on a per-worker basis.
Actually measuring work time requires taking measurements of all workers as well as taking new measurements every time a new worker is added or new work occur and can be a major hassle.
On the other hand, when calculating a standard work time based on past work history, there is a problem that estimation of the standard work time is difficult if a worker has no experience of certain work and therefore does not have a work history.
In addition, in the case of worker-centered work, although a production plan is preferably created by taking a variance in quality (failure occurrence rate) among workers into consideration, in a similar manner to estimating a standard work time, there is a problem that estimation of the failure occurrence rate is difficult if a worker has no experience of target work and therefore does not have a work history.
As an example of a related technique, Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2007-133664 discloses a method including: selecting a product similar to a new product from performance data of each product previously produced by a target production process; calculating, based on the performance data, prediction data of a standard work time, standard work man-hours, a work difficulty and a material procurement period, a level of fatigue of a worker, and a proficiency of the worker with respect to the new product; performing, based on the prediction data, a preliminary simulation of a production process of the new product using a production process simulator; and creating a production plan based on a result of the preliminary simulation.